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Big Computer Four - part 7 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

by Mike McNamee Published 01/04/2017

Machine-intensive Tasks with InDesign
Pre-flighting InDesign has traditionally been a thankless task when using the built-in utility. It was so slow that the magazine deadlines never allowed us the luxury and we resorted to waiting for the pre-flight report from pre-press, which was never ideal. We noticed pre-flight working on the new machine and decided to do a bench-mark. A total of 973 errors were identified in 33 seconds! For the very first time since we started using InDesign (ie the whole life of Imagemaker) we can afford the luxury of pre-flighting!

After pre-flighting another tedious job is the final, magazine press-ready, PDF build. This can take up to an hour per file and we usually make three versions. The job was completed in 4 minutes leaving no time for a teabreak!

Indexing of PDFs is something that we routinely do for all Imagemaker files. This can take almost a day and is usually done overnight. A total of 3,975 PDF files were catalogued in 63 minutes. The process indexes every word ever written in Imagemaker but once done we were able to search for particular words in around three seconds. To put some perspective on that, we estimate that there are between seven and 10 million words involved.

Analysis so far
The machine has now been running for a week. It is very quiet considering the power at our disposal. Most of the little snaggy bits such as fonts, templates, stationery and logos have been located and relinked – these things always get left behind and can take a few weeks to iron out!

The opening of applications is the most visible benefit when using the machine. Working directly from the NAS box is a little slower than working locally as the files have to be piped through the network and so the jury is still out on whether to work locally on the ‘current’ Imagemaker using the local, fast SSD.

The overall cost balance of the final machine build is shown opposite and below. The first iteration was dominated by the graphics card and the final (lower pie chart) represents a better investment overall. To date the calibration of the monitors seems reasonable but we have also upgraded our BabelColor software and so Fogra certification (a much more searching monitor test) will be carried out in due course. We’ll keep you posted.

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1st Published 01/04/2017
last update 09/12/2022 14:51:40

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